Thursday, January 22, 2015

Suspicious Death in Argentina

Some Argentines are
calling Alberto Nisman, the maverick prosecutor, the 86th casualty of one of
the deadliest, unsolved terrorists attacks in modern history: the 1994 bombing
of a Jewish community center in Buenos
Aires. That seems fitting whetherhis death over the weekendturns out to be a suicide, as the
government ofPresident Cristina Fernández de
Kirchnerseems eager
to establish, or the murder of a man who had learned too much.

This much is clear: The best hope of definitively establishing
the truth about the horrificJuly 18, 1994, bombingand its tortured, politicized
investigation is to impanel an international team of jurists who can take a
fresh, objective look at the evidence.

The truth became more important after Mr. Nisman’s body was
discovered inside his apartment on Sunday, hours before he was expected to testify
on his startling allegation that Ms. Kirchner cut a deal with the Iranian
government to protect some of the culprits of the attack.

Ms. Kirchner’s late husband, former
president Néstor Kirchner, appointed Mr. Nisman to lead the inquiry a decade
ago after acknowledging a shocking series of blunders by those assigned to the
case over the years. Mr. Nisman, 51, became convinced that the bombing was
carried out by the Shiite militant movement Hezbollah under orders of the
Iranian government. Based on the prosecutor’s investigation, Argentina got
Interpol to issue arrest notices forseven prominent
Iranians, including a Hezbollah leader and several government
officials.

In a strange twist, in January 2013, Argentina announced it had reached a deal with Iran to
establish a “truth commission” that would investigate the case jointly. The
notion that Iran could be
counted on to play a constructive role was questionable at best and rightly met
with skepticism from Argentina’s
Jewish community.

Earlier this month, Mr. Nisman unveiled a300-page complaint chargingthat
Ms. Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman conspired to absolve top
Iranian officials in exchange for commercial deals that would benefit both
cash-strapped governments. President Kirchner issued stern denials. Mr. Nisman
said he would corroborate the allegations in a congressional hearing on Monday.

According to the Argentine press, there were no signs that Mr.
Nisman was suicidal in recent days. Over the weekend, he prepared for the
hearing. He wrote a grocery list for his maid to run to the store on Monday.
Despite having a 10-person security detail, Mr. Nisman signaled that he was
concerned for his safety, telling an Argentine journalist, Natasha
Niebieskikwiat, on Saturday:“I might turn up dead from all this.”

Ms. Kirchner, a pugnacious stateswoman who has been vindictive
toward enemies in the press and politics, weighed in on the case ina lengthy, rambling
statementposted on
her personal website late Monday. “Suicide,” she wrote, is always a befuddling
act. “What led a person to make such a terrible decision and end their life?”
Missing from her note was a message of condolence for Mr. Nisman’s family. But
the most glaring omission is the fact that the manner of death is far from a
settled question.